A Comparative Study Of Classroom Questioning Between Novice Teachers And Expert Teachers In Senior Middle School

Among all the studies concerning class teaching, teachers’ discourse has long beenone of the focuses. Classroom questioning is seen as the skill widely applied inclassroom teaching. Teacher is the demonstrator of the target language, whose qualityof discourse can exert direct influence on the success or failure of classroom teachingand students’ mastery of the target language. Nunan （1991:189） ever said, teachers’discourse is of foremost importance not only for the organization of class teaching butalso for second language acquisition. This study experiments on classroomquestioning of high school English teachers. Through the analysis of questioningstrategy, types of questioning, and teacher feedback, the thesis places its focus on fourEnglish classes delivered by four teachers in two high middle schools in XuchangCity, Henan Province. The study has an in-depth observation on the current situationof teachers’ questioning, students’ comment on it, and the differences between noviceteachers and expert teachers on planning and actual delivering, aiming to providesome reference and advice for novice teachers and other educational practitioners.Through classroom recording, questionnaire, and interview, the study comes to thefollowing conclusions: there exist obvious differences between novice teachers andexpert teachers in terms of classroom questioning. Novice teachers are mostlyyounger ones, so the class atmosphere is more active and communicative. Theyquestion more than expert teachers, but reference questions of expert teachersoutnumber those of novice teachers. Novice teachers barely prepare for the questionsthey are going to ask. They mostly improvise. In comparison, expert teachers tend towrite the questions they are going to ask into teaching log. In terms of feedback,novice teachers give more simple positive feedback and obscure negative feedback,while expert teachers give more explanatory positive feedback and direct negativefeedback.From the above we can see novice teachers need more professional training toimprove their mastery of questioning skills and raise awareness of questioning. Theyare also expected to be more flexible when giving students feedback, and provide different kinds of feedback according to the occasion, so that students can realize theirperformance and correct errors in time.